The present invention relates to a route guide, and in particular relates to a route guide between buildings or inside buildings, and a method of providing route guidance to a destination through the inside of the building. In further detail, the present invention relates to a technique for providing a route guide using building information modeling (BIM) data.
A navigation system is a system that supports movement to a destination by presenting to a user a route to a destination along with a map, when a user inputs a destination and a starting point if necessary. Navigation systems were first developed as automotive navigation systems, and then as personal navigation devices (PND).
In recent years, in conjunction with enhanced functionality of mobile terminals such as smart phones, mobile phone, tablet terminals, mobile game devices, and the like, communication type navigation systems that transmit maps and route guide information from an information distribution server (possibly a route search server) to the mobile terminal have become popular as navigation systems for pedestrians. With these communication type navigation systems, application software installed in the mobile terminal (hereinafter also simply referred to as “application”) provides navigation functions to the user of the mobile terminal in cooperation with an application related to navigation that is installed in the information distribution server.
For example, Google® Maps, Ekipedia, NAVITIME®, MapFan® eye, Docomo® DriveNet, and Its-mo Navi are known applications that provides navigation functions to the mobile terminal.
Google Maps provides an indoor map function (known as “Indoor Google Maps” in addition to maps, local (regional) search functions, and route and transfer guidance functions. Indoor Google Maps enables viewing of indoor maps of some commercial facilities such as airports, train stations, department stores, shopping centers, malls, and the like using Google Maps. Furthermore, Google is publishing “Google Maps Floor Plant Marker” application on the Internet. With “Google Maps Floor Plan Marker”, the application collects GPS, mobile base station, and Wi-Fi data and the like while the user walks around inside the building, and can enhance navigation precision based on this collected data.
Ekipedia provides barrier free transfer maps in addition to train route searching functions.
Navitime® provides a TOTALNAVI® function that searches and displays the optimal route from a starting point to a destination, as well as a GURUTTONAVI® function that also searches for an optimal route by setting a midpoint in addition to a destination and starting point. Navitime Japan which is the developer of Navitime uses Navitime and is participating in verification testing of barrier free route guidance (Refer to nonpatent literature 4).
MapFan® eye is an AR pedestrians route guide application where the direction of travel can be intuitively understood simply by pointing an iPhone® in the forward direction.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application 2011-21971 discloses an indoor guidance system that includes a plurality of marker devices provided at predetermined positions in a building, and a portable user terminal that can wirelessly transfer data with the marker devices. (Paragraph 0009).
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application 2006-250792 discloses a route information control system in which route information is transferred and recorded between a plurality of position marking devices that are attached along the route and a terminal device carried by a pedestrian (claim 1).
In order to achieve appropriate route guidance even in an indoor environment (paragraph 0012), Japanese Unexamined Patent Application 2010-286271 discloses a route guiding device that stores information that identifies a plurality of rooms and map information that includes information that identifies the contact point that a person travels through between each room and the rooms adjacent to each room, ranking is applied to each combination of the plurality of rooms and the plurality of contact points, and information that identifies one or more guidance information distribution points that define the direction is stored, and at least one guidance photograph data is stored for each of the one or more guidance information distribution points (claim 1).
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application 2011-75402 discloses that a storage part of a navigation server provides facility information recording means that associates and records coordinates for each facility, a building ID for each building where the facility exists, and a floor ID of the floor of the building where the facility exists (claim 1).
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application 2011-145164 discloses a navigation device having a recording part that stores outdoor map data indicating the condition of outdoor space, facility data that includes facilities provided at the starting point and the destination, structured data that expresses the indoor space of the structure, network data that includes link information between a node and another node required for route searching, structure and facility corresponding data that includes the relationship between structures and the facility, and data corresponding to structures and notes that include the corresponding relationship between notes and structures (claim 1).
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application 2000-97721 discloses an indoor movement control device for a traveler that detects position using an indoor PHS and antenna technology, displays a travel route from a current position to a destination of the traveler on a terminal carried by the traveler, and announces route information while controlling entry by introducing and distinguishing security distinguishing events based on the security level of the destination (paragraph 0001).
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application 2006-133903 discloses an integrated information service system that provides integrated information support indoors and outdoors (paragraph 0004).
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application 2006-017647 discloses a communication navigation system that can effectively search for routes across floors even in underground malls and inside buildings (paragraph 0025).
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application 2008-33043 discloses a map information distribution system that efficiently distributes indoor route guiding maps even to terminal devices with a small display screen and a relatively small transfer capacity such as a mobile phone or PDA or the like (paragraph 0013).
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application 2012-128779 discloses a virtual object display device that generates a virtual object in three-dimensional virtual space, and displays the virtual object to a viewer (paragraph 0001).